


Ender in the End

by apisdn



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Ender's Game - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Bonding over Genocide, But they hate it, Ender and The Doctor are actually really similar, Genocide, They both have ears, and are pale, and killed a planet, and smarts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 06:56:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18773554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apisdn/pseuds/apisdn
Summary: The TARDIS yanks Rose and the Doctor to a bridge at dusk.





	Ender in the End

The TARDIS whirred and clanked. That was normal. What was not normal was that there seemed to be no impetus for said whirring and clanking. They weren’t trying to go anywhere, they were just eating Chinese takeout, and Rose was contemplating what color she intended to paint her toenails.

“Oi. What are you doin.” shrieked Rose as the sudden shaking caused her to lose the tremulous grip her chopsticks had on a rather juicy piece of beef.

The Doctor put his food down quickly. “Nothing. I’m not doing anything. This is all the TARDIS. Pretty neat innit?”

“NO!” said Rose. “We have no idea where we might end up. It could be a warzone out there.”

“Oh I reckon this old girl knows what she’s doin’. Bit of surprise. Bit of adventure.” by that time the shaking had subsided and they had obviously reached their destination. “You’re usually up for an adventure aren’t you? This will be” he flung open the doors for effect, and breathed in the air outside. “Oh no.” the Doctor stiffened.

Rose came up behind him concerned. They were on one side of a bridge over a river. It was a little bit futurey, but not overly weird so probably Earth, and Rose didn’t see the problem. It was night, the end of twilight with just a hint of periwinkle lingering on the horizon and stars everywhere. In the distance there were fireworks. “What’s the problem.”

“The era.” said the Doctor. “You’ve probably noticed I’ve only ever taken you far into the future.”

“Yeah.” said Rose. “What's up with that? I get not goin to my lifetime, but it might be grand to see what the near future is like.”

“Earth’s near future...  It isn’t pretty.” said the Doctor. “The first worldwide government and first real contact with an alien species… They’re not how you’d want them to be. There’s war. Over half a century of it. Not to mention the barbaric child labor infractions and the social issues. How they dealt with overpopulation… and religion… After that it gets better though- no more than five years and some real interstellar trade will start up how about that? And colonies”

“Doctor you’re babbling again. And we’ve been a lot of places with worse.” said Rose, putting her hand on his shoulder. “So what is it about this time that you hate so much?”

“It’s the year 2205 and Earths military just committed xenocide. They killed a planet. Rose, I… I don’t like xenocides. Especially ones like this, ones like…” he trailed off.

“Gallifrey.” Rose whispered. She’d only been doing this for a few weeks, but the Doctors loss was so harsh, so there, and when they’d seen that Dalek she’d learned. Not all, just a little, but she knew enough never to mistake him for simply a dark-haired bloke from the north. Gallifrey wasn’t there because a war killed it, and the Doctor had been involved in that war. This hit too close to home. Right in the Doctor’s heart. Hearts. Whatever. “We can go somewhere else.” She said.

“No.” said the Doctor. “The TARDIS… I have to trust that she knows what she’s doing. She doesn’t really experience time the way we do, you know, so if she brought us here, it’s because we need to be here. We’ve always come here to this place at this time to do the things we will do. We just didn’t know it yet, but she did. She always watches out for things like that. Appointments and the like.”

Rose sighed. “Yeah. I guess, but if it gets to be too much, just… I’m here for you.”

The Doctor closed the TARDIS door behind him, and glanced around at the idyllic scene, fireworks over the river on a cool evening and the distant sounds of celebration. It was all so wrong.

“Actually, I don’t think we’re here for me.” he said.

Rose turned to him, and made a valiant effort to raise an eyebrow. It was moderately successful in that an eyebrow was risen. Its mate, however, rose with it.

The Doctor pointed out onto the bridge. “I think we’re here for him.” he said.

It was difficult to discern details in the dusky light, but there did appear to be a small figure out on the bridge. Concerningly, it was standing on the railing and leaning against a lamppost that was providing illumination with the same milky consistency as moonlight.

The Doctor did not run towards him though as was his habit. Instead he walked steadily but sadly. Rose thought he looked like a man at a funeral or some such. As they approached the figure, which was resolving itself into a young boy, tall for his age, but skinny- maybe about ten or eleven, the Doctor moved even slower. Rose patted his arm comfortingly.

When they reached the boy, they stopped, and there was silence for several moments save for the faraway fireworks. The longer she looked at him, the more disturbed Rose was. He was a little boy, there was no doubt about it, but there was something very wrong with him. His skin was so pale as to be nearly translucent, and the military buzz cut and severe clothing did not help matters at all. Plus, he was so still, like a statue of a boy instead of a real one.

“I’m fairly sure truancy from the celebrations could be termed social suicide. Why are you here.” accused the boy. His voice was wrong too. It was clipped, commanding, and faintly mocking despite carrying the lightness of a prepubescent. At the same time it was somehow familiar. Rose shivered.

“Not much of a social one, am I.” said the Doctor, trying and failing to interject his usual lightness into the conversation. “Not one for those celebrations either.”

“Hmm.” said the boy. “You mean you find celebrating the greatest crime ever committed by the human race distasteful.” he said. It wasn’t a question. “Commendable.”

Rose got the sense they had just been judged, and found acceptable. The Doctor was frowning in a suspicious way though. “Why aren’t you at the celebrations yourself. The propaganda about the event in question doesn’t really allow for other opinions. I really doubt the Hegemony would want you spouting out that their victory was a crime. Very determined to stamp out diverse thought is the Hegemony. Bunch of tossers.”

The boy laughed bitterly, and it shook through him, the first real movement he’d made. “The current hegemon really isn’t in a place where he can contradict anything I say. I put him there, after all.”

The Doctor froze, and Rose could see a familiar anger in his eyes that he only got when faced with something utterly unforgivable. “You’re Ender Wiggin.” he said. His voice was a near whisper, and full of an ugly emotion that Rose didn’t know how to properly describe.

“Yes.” said the boy, with the kind of weariness a preteen really should not possess. “I am.” then he looked over his shoulder at them.

Rose was shaken to her core with the strongest sense of deja vu she’d ever experienced. Something had seemed familiar, and now she knew what it was. This boy was somehow inextricably exactly like the Doctor had been when she’d first met him. He was angry, and in pain, and behind it all was the kind of loss and guilt that should be impossible to come back from. He was intense, and intelligent, and all the things she’d noticed about the Doctor the first time she’d watched him stare down a hostile alien threatening the planet. This boy was like that, but so young still, not even a teenager yet. It was chilling.

The Doctor broke the tense silence that had descended. “How could you.” he said, nearly a whine and full of raw hurt. “You defended against attackers and then you didn’t stop, even when they stopped attacking.”

“I know.” said the boy. It was a whisper that time, and though his body stayed rock steady his face was a study in emotional turmoil.

“They’d stopped attacking.” said the Doctor. “You won. And then you killed them all. That’s…”

“Senseless?” questioned the boy, Ender. He was loud now, and his eyes were full of fire. “Cruel?” he turned fully and jumped off of the railing. “Inhumane?” he walked a step towards the Doctor, who flinched back--the first time Rose had ever seen him flinch. “Filled with the worst kind of sadism and apathy for the value of life imaginable?” continued the boy. Each statement had gotten more vicious, hissing and spitting with contempt.

“Yes” whispered the Doctor.

“I know.” said the boy. He looked away, no longer willing to meet the Doctor’s eyes. All the previous fight had gone out of him. “I will bear the shame of that genocide till my dying day. The blood on my hands will never be washed clean, especially not with things like that.” he gestured with disgust at the fireworks show and the accompanying celebrations. “They might call me a hero, but I know better. I am a monster.”

The Doctor reacted like he’d been slapped when faced with those flatly delivered convictions. Rose didn’t quite know why, but those words must’ve hit the Doctor somewhere very much too close to home.

“Do you know the worst part?” asked Ender. Rose didn’t want to, and she didn’t think that the Doctor could quite handle knowing it either, but the question had been rhetorical so they didn’t have a choice.

“The worst part is that I finally managed to speak to them before I killed them. This whole war happened because we couldn’t understand each other, and when they finally figured it out the only thing they did was ask me for mercy. They wanted me to save them, and they left me the tools to do it, but by the time I looked for them they were already dead, the last members of a species left cold and unborn in their eggs because I didn’t act quickly enough, because instead of going to find them I left to go kill even more people putting my brother in the hegemon’s seat.”

These revelations were obviously new to the Doctor, and he looked horrified. Rose was fairly sure that she couldn’t even begin to understand truly what he was feeling. He was the last of his species as well, so to him… 

“What I have done is unforgivable. You can accuse me all you wish but trust me when I tell you that it is impossible for you to be as repulsed by my actions as I am. Just… Leave me be.” The boy turned away, going back to staring out at the fireworks. “Go enjoy the ‘peaceful’ and ‘safe’ world that’s just been built on a billion corpses.” 

For the first time since she’d met him, the Doctor fully turned tail and ran. It wasn’t like his usual retreats that tended to be simply for the sake of physical safety. This was full on, no doubt about it, running away. In any other situation it might have been almost funny. The Doctor running away from an angry rant by a preteen he didn’t know. It wasn’t funny though. It was painful. Rose didn’t really know what to do, or say. This was… rather fucked up if she really thought about it. In the end she followed the Doctor to the TARDIS at a much slower pace without really saying anything. This stop on their journey wouldn’t be one she’d be sharing with anyone.


End file.
